The Wheel of Fortune

Well, the spring planting is finally finished and now I can take a breather, as we say here in Maine (more like breeth-ah). I have been busy, busy, busy since last I wrote. I planted carrots, and beets, beet greens, lettuce, cabbage, kale, turnips,
rutabagas, broccoli, fennel, bok choy, lots and lots of onions, and peas. We still have room for the tomatoes and cukes, but need to find some place else for our corn, potatoes, squash, beans, and summer squash... so I have decided to find a nice home for the goats, and expand the garden. The herb garden I started last year is looking nice too, with sage, oregano, savory, thyme, chives and tarragon all up, and basil, parsley and lovage seedlings waiting for the last frost - usually within 3 days after the full moon in June, unless it's a late one.
Everything just seems to be better and better. My raspberries and wild blueberries are spreading. I found baby choke cherry trees, and service berry bushes, and an apple I had thought was dead all growing in an isolated corner. The fiddle heads are up, and what more can I say. Life is good.

The Wheel of Fortune - This speaks to the spiritual law: As Within So Without. Our fool has changed, and is a fool no longer, so of course the outward reality of his life is going to change too. With every mastery of some thing that used to push those buttons, or some unresolved childhood pain, or owning of what was once denied (what we were in denial of), the people, places, things, times and events that once reflected to us what we needed to learn, all troop out of our lives. They aren't needed any more, and new mirrors appear to take us even further along our way.

Some call this time of flux the dark night of the soul. This is because we are actually physically addicted to our reality as it is. Every time we do something we are used to doing regularly, like getting angry, or sexy, or weepy, we are taking a hit. It isn't bad, but it will eventually disrupt the normal protein synthesis in the cell and begin the degradation we call aging. To truly change means experiencing a period of withdrawal.

Symbolically we see the wheel of our fortune turning. On top is the Sphinx, keeper of the Riddle of Life, and dealer of death to those who cannot divine the answer (the answer is all over the place though - change, learn new things, grow). Descending on the wheel is the Apep monster, a euphemism for the digestive tract of Nut. It, with it's many ribs, represents here the carnal human, all about appetites. Ascending is the warrior god Set. We know this is the canine form of Set because he is red, whereas Anubis would always be black; and because Set is the only god who can defeat the Apep monster. He rides in the bow of Ra's solar barge and fights the monster every night (remember Nut eats the solar barge every evening and births it every dawn, she doesn't digest it and excrete it, she births it). Set was an old god long before Isis and Osiris came on the scene, and he represented the terrible power of the desert. It was a sort of Zen power, a stripping away of the fleshy and unnecessary, leaving the bare bones of truth behind. In the four corners of the card are the four living beasts which represent the altar and throne of God, as well as the four fixed signs of the zodiac - Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius. They are reading your book of life, your soul, because now it is interesting again. The wheel then is the wheel of the sun's circuit daily, it is a day - an admonition to live in the moment least you unguardedly fall back into old ways. There are two aspects of the wheel which point to another understanding as well: a wheel may just sit in one place, spinning, making a rut for it self, or it can take you on a journey. It all comes down to choice.

Why Is The Senate Not Even Considering The Only Health Care Plan That Really Works?

"There are rare moments of clarity when we the people can see
through the veil of illusion designed to condition us into docile
inaction.
There was such a moment this week, when Senator Max Baucus, chairman
of the Senate Finance Committee, having already preemptively excluded
any participation of a credible spokesperson for single payer health
care, laughingly joked "we need more police", when one qualified
doctor and lawyer after another stood up to protest their exclusion
from the debate.
THAT was the real Max Baucus, a contemptuous corporatist, who is as
likely to voluntarily bring forward a real people's health program as
Dick Cheney is likely to voluntarily testify under oath. Perhaps you
have already seen the video clip
(it is on the action page), of him trying to laugh off consideration of single payer health care.
And it is not just Baucus, the whole Senate panel erupted into
riotous laughter. Even the so-called "liberals", like John Kerry, who
was anxious to get in his own wisecrack about "Is there anybody in
the audience who didn't ... uh ... come to ...", before it finally dawned on Baucus how incredibly bad this would look on video, as he interrupted Kerry, to try to resume projecting the usual phony concern and compassion.

Folks, this is who those senators REALLY are. This is the way they talk about us behind closed doors, in their cloakrooms, snickering with the lobbyists paying them off about how they pulled off another fast one under the noses of the people. When they are joking, as when Bush joked about being a dictator, THAT is who they really are. And the whole charade DEPENDS on them fooling us into thinking they are representing us for even one second that they are not FORCED to by our active voices.

There is a MASSIVE industry sponsored astroturf campaign going on right this very instant. If you are reading this on a web site, even a progressive one, this very page may be wallpapered with slick banner ads calling for a "balanced health care debate" or "fair health care", and it is one of the most deceptive "petition" actions we have ever encountered, asking you to sign on to a HIDDEN agenda, WITHOUT even disclosing what you are actually signing on to. "Fair and balanced health care". Where have we heard an expression like that before?
In the words of the AP itself, these industry groups are trying to strike a preemptive deal with Obama "in the hopes they can stave off legislation that would restrict their profitability in future years". In other words, to KILL single payer health care, which would give the American people the REAL savings (estimated for us at 350 billion per year) that the people of every other major industrial nation
already enjoy.

And most of all, please understand that of all the huge lies that they have told us, there is ONE lie at the heart of them all. Lies like they were going to end the war in Iraq, when they had no intention of doing any such thing, when the plan has always been and REMAINS to keep at least 50,000 troops in that country until the end of time, that they were going to do something to help struggling homeowners, when the plan was always to loot the public treasury for trillions of dollars, a massive transfer of wealth to the Wall Street con men who caused the whole financial crisis in the first place.

We could go on and on, but there is one lie at the root of them all.

Do you know what it is?

The mother of all lies. The lie they use again and again to keep us from bringing about real change. The biggest lie of them all. Bigger than "compassionate conservatism", bigger than "the war on terror", bigger than "weapons of mass destruction", bigger than "the trickle down theory", bigger than "torture keeps us safe", yes, even bigger than "looking forward not backward" or "change we can believe in".
Do you know what the biggest, most diabolical lie they have ever told
us is?
The BIGGEST LIE of ALL: that we the people do not have the power to
change any of this.

Do we not understand our power? Do we not understand that they shaking in their socks right now in fear that we will finally get it, that there is NO power without the consent of the governed, and that all we have to do is say "No more" in sufficient numbers, and we the people will be free.
Their position is so WEAK, so lacking in merit, so indefensible, they are so afraid of the power of our positions that they have to resort to police oppression to try to shut us up. That is why they need to call on "more police" to keep single payer advocates from even having a speaking seat at the table, to try to keep their voices OUT of the media. Because if the public for one moment was exposed to an actual fair debate, the phony "fair debate" would be seen for the total charade and sham that is it.
We don't need more police. That is not the health care plan we are calling for. We need need more doctors, and nurses, not more insurance company administrators awarding themselves outrageous bonuses to deny suffering people in pain the health care they deserve.
...At the end of the day we have no enemy greater than our own defeatism. It is the lie they tell us to tell ourselves, without which they have NO power at all besides
the gun they can point at our heads."

The Hermit

The Hermit - In the oldest of faiths the chief amongst the Gods was the God of the Axis Mundi. The Dagda, Atlas, Cronus... he comes down to us as Santa Claus, and for a good reason.

Remember that I said The Warrior/Charioteer needed the power of wisdom, well this card is one way you gain wisdom. When you turn to the spiritual path you usually have many years of human experience under your belt. The problem with it is, that not all of it has become wisdom yet. These are those buttons that the world just seems to love to push, and every time we have an emotional reaction, just like we always have. And every time we do that we are loosing the chance to resolve the problem. This card is the key to finally resolving these issues. It is The Observer, that is why he is peering down. He is observing all of life unfold below where he stands.

Symbolically his staff is the celestial north pole, which even primitive people could observe the heavens revolved around, day and night. In a way he and his staff are one. He stands on a snowcapped mountain in a snowbound place, the far north (yes, we know there is an ice cap there, but historically he was always imaged as standing on a mountain or "earthen mound" which represented the Cerebellum, and the Earth Goddess "Beauteous Ceres" because that is the part of the brain where this God operates from). He wears gray because he is invisible. In his lantern he has locked the pole star, the only star which seems not to revolve.

Have you ever, perhaps on the verge of an emotional storm, stepped back from it into an unemotional state of mind? Have you ever, under great stress had a greater self seem to step forward and assume control - perhaps you had to testify in court, or were about to have a car accident? Those are the moments when we have become the Observer, the God we really are. In the emergency we quickly turned our will over to God, and things worked to our best advantage. Thing is we need to do it more often. Those buttons? If you can stand back, in an emotionless space, and observe your body trying to have the same old reaction, the neural network of that habitual reaction will fall apart, and in it's place you get wisdom - a new perspective literally. Sometimes doing this exercise once is all it takes, sometimes two or three times more. It is a very powerful tool. In a moment you have changed your life. The diss-ease that would have become disease is now treasure, wisdom.

And, as if that wasn't enough, this is also where you go with your desires, the things you are ready to allow into your life. You draw a picture, or some other representation of your desire and observe it; never letting the mind stray to how and when, you just observe.

Caution!!!

The Chariot

The Chariot - This character is the fool again, but in this life time the person the fool represents has made the choice to live the master's path. The Fool has become the spiritual warrior. Behind him is the city, which represents traditional thought and accepted norms (social consciousness) of his people. There are some trees that represent his own neural networkss of prejudice, and limited thinking. These he has left behind, along with the dear friends and family who think he's gone cracked. He's cried a river of tears, but all that is behind him now. On the front of his chariot is the winged solar disc, which represents the enlightened brain - that is where he is headed - and the unified feminine and masculine, the red top, which represents where he has gained mastery, the base seal. The sphinxes represent the also polarized second seal, of emotional pain - they are tamed and working for him. On his breast he wears a white square, which represents the plane of visible light, the third seal; and on his or her garb we see symbols of the sources of visible light on this plane - moon, sun, flames(perhaps - the points of the crown), planets... The wand is not too impressive yet, but its a start. Above the head is a blue veil, a higher heaven this entity has not attained yet(the fourth/ultraviolet).
What this entity needs now is power. See how the skirt is patterned with alchemical and cabalistic symbols. Knowledge is only philosophy, a toy for mental gymnastics, until you have had life experiences that will give you understanding of the truth that the knowledge describes. Then it comes alive. Then it is wisdom and power. For instance I could tell you why people find it so hard to leave abusive relationships, but until you have experienced that terror yourself it has little meaning. Or, I could tell you the next dimension is light, but until you see for yourself you are at best only taking my word for it. We can all tell each other we are God until we are blue in the face, but until we experience it, it's just words. The philosophy, experienced, equals the power we need to begin seeing the truth of our own divinity. It is hard to see God in self, when self is a cringing, whining, powerless...
But it's not so hard when we have actually healed with our hands, actually known without being told, when we have gained power.

Why is Seven Sacred?

Some people call 'em Chakras...I was taught to call them seals, like the wax seal of a scroll, when opened the lesson unfolds. "Seals" are what are mentioned in the book of revelations. But a rose by any other name still smells the same.

The Seals are manifested in the body as endocrine glands, and the normal secretions of these glands gives us our clues as to what the lesson of each seal is:
Base seal - Testes - sexuality
Second seal - Ovaries - emotional pain
Third seal - Adrenals - power

These three seals are the ones that equate to survival, and to the human animal. They are often symbolized by an inverted equilateral triangle, often drawn in black. Women are actually a little ahead of men, in general, because we don't have as
much testosterone, which would tend to keep our energy in the base seal. We tend to the second seal in our teens and twenties, but usually are more third seal as we gain distance from childbearing urges.

Fourth seal - Thymus - Love
We all mostly dwelt at this level before puberty. The kundalini rose up to this seal. Love and growth go hand in hand. Most of us can recall the deep feelings of unconditional love we felt for those around us as children. That is fourth seal love, unlike the "love" of lower seals which is more often lust and curiosity mixed together.

Fifth seal - Thyroid - Expression of love
We have all felt our throat tighten when we were deep in emotional pain. This is the withdrawal of energy from the upper seals, into the lower, and a shutting down of this seal - not a permanent shutting down though, just a response to the emotional situation.

Sixth seal - Pineal - All is God
Seventh seal - Pituitary - I am God

Energy blocked at any of these levels will lead to dis-ease. And energy returning to them will give you symptoms too.
Common diseases related to these are:
1st seal - Prostate and testicular abnormalities
2nd seal - Ovarian cysts, endometriosis, cervical cancer
3rd seal - Diabetes
4th seal - a person who is hard hearted would develop hardening of the cardiac arteries. A person who is broken hearted may get a literally broken heart.
5th seal - A person who feels love but can't seem to express it develops cardiac congestive disease, congestive heart failure.
6th seal - Sleep disorders, depression related to lack of circulating seratonin... not sure what else.

Energy returning to the seventh seal/pituitary in greater amounts will cause the gland to grow and blossom, so to speak, but this will give you terrible headaches. I thought I had meningitis the first time I had one, because there is increased intercranial pressure with it, and often fever. This is different from other migraines in that the location of the pain is between your eyes and 2-3 inches in your head, right where your pituitary is. At first I had to take Darvocet for mine, but later I had a dream that told me to switch to nsaids, and I found motrin worked even better. I wouldn't have ever thought so, because the pain is just very intense, but it worked.

As there are seven seals there are also seven heavens. Each pair of seal and heaven corresponds to a wavelength level of the electromagnetic spectrum:
1 - Hertzian
2 - Infrared
3 - Visible Light
4 - Ultraviolet
5 - Xray
6 - Gamma Ray
7 - beyond our ability to read - mystically named Infinite Unknown
(Scientists don't like to be associated with mysticism so, fairly recently, they have added two levels between hertzian and infrared, and don't give comment on beyond Gamma - but these seven levels are traditionally correct)
To me it seems logical that if everything you can detect with your five senses is at the Hertzian level, then with a body of finer stuff there ought to be more to experience in each of the finer levels. In fact out of body experience, as I have known it is actually experienced in a lighter body and on a higher level. You can use this at night, when you sleep to explore the higher heavens, and know more about them. Just ask your spirit to make it so when you say your bedtime prayers.

There are also seven levels of the brain attuned to each of the seven heavens. I, sadly, have yet to learn them all, but here are some:
Cerebrum - hertzian - 1st seal
Midbrain - infrared - 2nd seal
Corpus callosum - ? 3rd or 4th
Cerebellum - 7th seal

So we have it:
Seven seals/glands locking up seven lessons to evolve through,
Seven levels of the brain attuned to each of the seven heavens,
Seven heavens with a body and mind on each,
All the way back to God

The Lovers

The Lovers - This card is all about choice, as many have said, but it is really more complex than that. This card says: Whatever you give your time, attention and thought to, will be what manifests in your life. That is the crux of it really and you don't have to read anymore to get it.
On the one side we have Eve or Lilith (we could even call her Pandora whose box or jar as a euphemism for her womb) and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The tree represents the body you need to experience this plane - trees generally symbolize the central nervous system, the bushy brain on top of the elongated spinal cord, with its roots extending out into the body; but as the CNS is what tells the cells what proteins to make, and ultimately makes the body, a tree can also symbolize the body. Which begs the question: What is wrong with taking on a body and experiencing life? That depends on who you give you power away too... er, who you ask. There have always been people who are willing to say the body is the source of our downfall. In truth there is nothing wrong with incarnating into flesh. It was the next step on our path of exploration. It is a privilege and an honor to be one of those given a body. But there are entities who are afraid to take the plunge, angelic entities who have never left the upper realms; and some of them truly despise us for doing what they fear to do, and some of these have interfered with us in our vulnerable state, teaching us to worship them and that what we did was wrong. We are the fallen angels of this myth, but it was more a leap of faith, than a casting down. I mean, you can only sit on a cloud plucking your harp for so long... Anyway, Eve, Lilith and Pandora got the blame.
The snake in Eve's tree is the kundalini, and the fruit is the mind created when that brain of unique genetics processes thought. We all know every mind is unique. Eve's tree could be called the tree of involution, as spiritually we were still descending from the God-head. Adam's tree, the Tree of Eternal Life, could also be called the tree of Evolution, because it represents a new body; the one with which we will continue to make known the unknown by ascending this plane. Allot has happened on those upper planes since you last saw them. Adam's tree could also be called a tree of light, as it is on fire. It has twelve flames, and that is important because twelve is the all inclusive number, saying: you don't have to be a Jesus or a Dali lama to ascend, anyone can who is willing to and wanting to.
The squiggly ground between the two lover's feet represents the winding path most of us wander between carnality and spirituality. But the path was a good one after all because it leads eventually to the mountain. All paths that lead to and climb the mountain are paths of spiritual evolution.
Between the two figures are some clouds. They aren't there for the spirit to ride on, they represent the brain. If you know a bit about brain anatomy you can even pick out some of the structures. This brings us back again to choice. Do we choose to spend every minute of the day living for things that give us emotion, the carnal things - the emotion of eating, of cuddling, of having an opinion, of being a victim, or perpetrator - or do we give some of our day to prayer and meditation, to expanding our knowledge, to expanding our God powers (manifestation, invisibility, healing, psychic communication, bilocation, biolocation, remote seeing...). There is only so much life force in the kundalini, but if we are progressive and ongoing it can become that other body without ever dying. That's part of what Jesus did those three days in the tomb.
The solar angel is not an angel at all, but our own holy spirit. It will make manifest in our lives which ever sorts of experiences we give our thought to. The spirit doesn't judge us for our choice. There is allot to be said for living life lustily - you don't want to be off on planet X wishing for one more pizza, or sunrise, or sniff of perfume... Satisfy all that now and you will never have cause for regret later. But when you are sated, let that sort of thing go. Don't be like the alcoholic who keeps reaching for alcohol though it stopped bringing joy into his life long ago; let it go.
There is a tricky aspect to manifesting though because sometimes we desire something and think we are focusing on it, but the real emotion behind the desire was lack, and so lack is what you are actually manifesting. There is an axiom the wise follow:
Seek first the kingdom of Heaven, and all else will follow.
Our God isn't ignorant of the fact that health, and wealth are important enhancements to life incarnate. Our God doesn't desire we live a limited life of poverty, and illness. But these things are gifts that can tie a person even more fully to the carnal nature. Whereas, if they are withheld, they can be the carrot leading the horse (us) further down the path home, which is always what we hope for when we are planning our life. These things naturally flow into the life of a person who lives first for spiritual evolution.

Karma

Now, I don't think karmic law is supreme law. I don't think that for every life you take you must pay with your own - else we would forever be in karmic debt to the insects alone. I do think that a man who is abusive toward women (or woman who hates men) may find in their life review that they need to experience being the opposite sex to gain empathy for them. And I think it works the same way with racist prejudices. But mostly I think karma is our own need to make things right when we feel really horrible about how we have behaved.
Which brings me around to GM... the company who killed the electric car. Sometimes watching karma unfold is just... very satisfying. Unfortunately the greedy decisions of the people at the top ends up hurting everyone below them too, and how do you karmicly repay that?

The Hierophant

The Hierophant - This is the card of the teacher. Everyone and everything in our lives is a reflection of who we are, and is thus a manifestation of the Hierophant. When a person or thing stops being a reflection of who we are it is finished and must leave the circle of our reality. For instance I used to always become involved with men who were needy and wound centered, like my father. These men were psychic vampires, and I kept drawing them until I did two things. First I stepped back and saw my own need, hidden because I was used to a caretaker role and thought I was too strong for neediness (which I secretly despised). And I did it without judgment, so I could later compassionately forgive these men, and my father, and myself. And I learned to say no. Now, there are no people like this in my life. Now I can see these men might not even really have been as they were to me. It could be that this was simply the role they agreed to play in my life and/or they were only a manifestation of Spirit. It is a truth that we do not even know for certain if anyone in our life is really real, or any situation... it could all be part of the matrix.

Anyway, I myself used to really dislike this card. It was all the negative side of it I saw and I couldn't see past that. The false teachings that enslave the soul in chains of shame and guilt. Organized religion, that whore, working with world government to control 'the rabble'. But in the greatest sense the Hierophant is our spirit, our greatest teacher, our greatest lover, and it is expressing through life.

One reason this shows up in a spread is to point out a lesson is to be learned, generally before anything else will change. The lack of learning the lesson has become a major obstacle and the person is stuck in spiritual evolution. Things will only become more painful until the lesson is learned. Another reason for this card to show (and at an unconscious level of mind just seeing this card communicates its truth) that they are their own greatest teacher, and to seek balance where gurus, ministers, preachers and other such external 'guides' are concerned.

Symbolically, one look at the face of this being and we see the entity portrayed is neither male nor female. Then we look at its feet, to see what it is above, or has already learned as far as life lessons go, and we see the checkerboard of polarity. So this being is above polarized reality, the first three, human, seals/lessons/heavens. Indeed it wears the crown of the four upper heavens. Also at its feet are four brown coins, marked in quarters, set in a square pattern, on a red carpet; meaning it has risen above the carnal and earthly. We see the shoes are white, unsoiled by earthiness. There are two keys each marked with male and female symbols, that are crossed; meaning the sexual urges are finished and the soulmates are reunited in this one entity (not that soulmates have to merge, but it is an option). The two friars are interesting. One wears the rose of carnal life, and the other wears the lily which is a funerary flower. One is marked with a Y or V and the other has a Y or V implied but all that shows of it seems to be the Hebrew version of Y or V, Yod or Vav. We also see two Ys or Vs or a W on the top of the crown. Two Yods in a row designate the name of God, Adonai. Vav/Waw is the letter of man, and is sometimes the Hebrew letter assigned to this card. It is the copulative element (the 'male' energy). All this seems to say that God is present even in the lowest nature of all, the sexual; God is certainly present in Mankind; and God perhaps lives at the apex of the 7 heavens. The friars indicate that the Hierophant has mastered death and the redundancy of reincarnation. The pillars and throne are gray because gray is the color of black and white combined, and also, as with the fourth horseman, because the fourth heaven (also designated by the color blue) is within the void so that it's color is spectral, ghostly
.
Most people are aware of the three lower heavens. The lowest is the material realm, where we are now, and it is truly foreign to our true natures. The next is the earthbound realm, which can be hellish, and purgatorial. The next is quite wonderful and this we call heaven, and we stop there. But there are four more enfolded within for those who learn love, the expression of love, and the nature of God (not as it is taught in church).

The clothes worn represent bodies or minds. As we have one present on each of the heavens, and each of the heavens has a symbolic color - ruddy brown for the material plane, red for the earthbound realm(infrared), White or rainbow(visible light) for the third (these three are all polarized planes), then we have the blue realm(ultraviolet), Golden, Rose, and Beyond color(sometimes shown as white or light pink), so the Hierophant wears the colors Blue, closest to the skin, white next, and outermost is red, and reddish brown is the color of the coins at it's feet. The blue gown and the gray pillars and throne all locate this entity at the fourth level - love.

The staff is marked with the cross bars of the four upper planes, each of which has a faster time than the plane below.

On the capitols we have a stylized womb, fallopian tubes and ovaries, within which is a cute little stylized acorn/penis. Again saying that sexual polarity is ended.

The being has three fingers raised, pointing to the triple nature of God/dess; and two fingers pointing down, referring to the polarized nature of the lower realms. Thus saying divinity exists on all levels.